


Photographs on the Wall

by stillgoldie1899



Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 15:39:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11084682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillgoldie1899/pseuds/stillgoldie1899
Summary: Faced with the loss of the man she loved, Sarah must find a way to carry on.





	Photographs on the Wall

He was...gone.

Not to Santa Fe, not out west, not out there in the desert living a dream. He was just gone.

It was so stupid, a fight over territory. Jack wasn't even a newsie anymore, but when his boys called for his help, of course he'd gone to help them. They were still his family. And the midtown boys had been giving them a hard time for a while by then, it had been brewing for a long time. Jack had been mentioning it at dinner for weeks, until it was frustrating to not get a word in edgewise. Frustrating because he'd moved on, he'd gotten a real job at Irving Hall, Medda was paying him real money, enough for an apartment of their own, now that they were married, now that he'd made an honest woman of her. It had been small, and simple, but the happiest day of her life, as she stood with him, spoke the words that would make her his, make him hers. They had done it, were doing it, were making a family together, a life together. It was small, and they didn't have much, but it was theirs.

And then, the boys had called him, begging for help. They'd never really sorted out leadership after he'd left, much like they had never sorted out leadership when he'd been there, he'd been leader in a de facto way, at best. And now they were really leaderless, although Blink tried to pick up the pieces, Mush helping out, but both of them were getting too old as well, she knew they were looking for real work, too.

All of which might make the fight seem a bit unfair, a pack of boys and grown men pitched against Midtown, except they were in the same boat, a group of newsboys whose leaders were simply too old to keep on at this, but afraid, like she knew a lot of Jack's boys were, of failing at being adults. Which really only made the fight more dangerous, a fight between men, not a simple brawl between boys.

After a while, they seemed more like gangs than groups of newsboys, it was true. And it was upsetting to her that Jack was still, at least marginally, part of one. But he was, his loyalties lay there, and off he'd gone, a pair of brass knuckles in his pocket, and she was sure he'd pick up some bit of debris or other to whack people with if he had to. She knew he thought they were prepared for the encounter.

But someone on the other side didn't apparently know it was rude to bring guns to a brawl. She'd never be sure how any of them had even managed to get their hands on one, guns were expensive, and dangerous if you didn't know what to do with them, more likely to blow up in your hands if poorly maintained than anything else. These weren't poorly maintained, however, and Jack wasn't the only one hit.

He was just the only one who'd died.

She'd been fretting, pacing in their cupboard sized kitchen, wondering if she should even put dinner on, was he going to want to eat? When there came a crashing banging on the door. She'd run, jerked it open in time for Blink to collapse under the weight of her husband's limp form, blood soaking through his shirt, soaking through Blink's, as well. There was nothing she could do to stop herself from screaming at the sight of it. But rationally, a moment later, she pulled herself together and helped the blond boy bring her husband inside, and onto the dining room table, her mother's lace table cloth forgotten under him.

She wasn't a doctor, or a nurse, or even marginally versed in medicine, but she knew, as she pealed layers of fabric away from the wound, that it was bad, very bad. And that she wasn't sure she could help him, worse, she wasn't sure a doctor could help him either. But Blink was already running for one, while she tried to clean the blood off, pressing napkins against it, struggling to keep herself calm, to hold the panic at bay.

And she was right. There wasn't anything the doctor could do by the time he got to Jack. Too much blood lost, the bullet had gone through in the wrong places, he was bleeding to death, and there was nothing any of them could do to stop it. The whiskey on the man's breath didn't exactly instill a sense of security with the man's ability, but he'd been the only doctor Blink could get to come, the only one any of them could have afforded, and he was the one, an hour later, who declared Jack Kelly dead.

And that was that. Her life, a life that just hours before had seemed to spread before her like a hopeful dream, came crashing down on her. The struggle against panic settled into a dull numbness that seemed to smother her. Had it not been for her parents, her brothers, she wouldn't have managed to get through it all, the planning, the funeral, Jack's body laid to rest on a day when even the sky seemed to weep for the loss of him, a downpour of rain that lingered for days.

She was so lost. For so long, she just barely made it through the motions of living, her mother's insistence on bringing her food the only reason she kept eating, the need for money for the rent the only thing that got her up in the morning, and to work. She just drifted, lost, through the weeks that followed.

And little surprise that she didn't notice. Not for a very long time. Longer than it should have taken her. She only really noticed when she actually started showing. A swell of belly, hard to the touch, her corset getting uncomfortable, both at the top and at the bottom, and the sickness that had been lingering for weeks suddenly made more sense than sickness brought on by grief.

But her joy about it was tempered. Even as the child growing in her got bigger, as she got more cumbersome, as she should have been planning for the baby, getting ready for it, thinking of names, and knitting blankets and booties, she couldn't. Her child, Jack's child, would never know their father. She didn't even have photographs or pictures to show them. All she would have was tales. Of the man he was, the man she dreamed he might someday have been.

Those worried dogged her, even as she gave birth, a blurred, horrible event, hours of pain and screaming, first hers, then the small wail of first one child, and then another. A boy, and a girl. She thought of naming the boy Jack, but that was too painful. Instead she named them Peter and Rebecca. And as she lay in her bed, feeling bittersweetly heartbroken, smiling tearfully down at the two tiny, sleeping faces in her arms, her mother informed her that there had been a messenger while she was in labor, and that he'd brought her a package.

It took her a few days to even get to it. The twins kept her, and her mother, very busy, and learning how to be a mother herself took her time. But eventually, a week later, when the twins were both down for a nap at the same time, and actually sleeping, she took a moment to study the package. It was thin, and squarish, and heavy, and the note attached simply said, "For the children."

As she peeled the brown paper wrapping it off, her heart stopped a bit. A framed picture, in a wonderful carved wood frame. Her fingers brushed against the detail of it, smooth and lacquered, shiny black. The frame itself must have cost a fortune, but it was the picture that mattered. The only picture anyone had ever taken of her husband, surrounded by his family. Denton's picture, carefully tinted.

There was her husband, smiling at her. Still a boy, a bare hint of the man he might have become. She'd been so proud of him that day. So proud of all of them, standing up for themselves.

Holding the expensive frame, and the precious picture to her chest, she finally really let herself just cry. Not for her own sorrow, but for the children, for his friends, for everyone. For the man the world had lost, the man the world would never know. The man she loved, and would always love. For Jack.


End file.
